Professor Ranga has realized the ambition of m any years by
becoming President of the Andhra Provincial Congress Committee. Professor Ranga
has a large following in Andhra Desa. He gave political consciousness to many
peasants who had little interest in things unconnected with agriculture and
family life. An indefatigable wanderer, there are few places he has not visited
in Andhra Desa. He is a close second to Prakasam in the matter of harnessing
peripatetic exertion to political work. But Prakasam does not aspire for world
leadership. He likes to be on good terms with the people of Tamil Nadu and
Kerala and has paid occasional visits to them, but the main concentration of
his public effort has been confined to Andhra districts. Professor Ranga is not
content with anything so limited as provincial leadership. His bid has ever
been for national leadership which he has sought to promote with frequent tours
to far flung provinces in the country. But it would not be correct to estimate
his ambition politically as restricted by any means to the boundaries of India.
He has not neglected the rest of Asia. Nor other continents either. He sees
himself as a leader of the coloured inhabitants of colonial empires all the
world over, and the rudimentary fragments of an organization intended to give
form to the vision have already, you can bet, taken shape in his restless
brain.
* * *
Prakasam carries no elaborate ideological equipment in his
political luggage. Between leadership, and public judgment there is generally
an inverted connection. The greater the leader, the less the inclination of
people to subject what he says to critical analysis. Once in a thousand years a
man like Lenin is born who asks for no blind faith, invites criticism, and with
every step that he advocates, increases the power of his followers to think,
reason, discriminate, reject boldly and accept wisely. The ascendancy of such a
one is accompanied by no mass enslavement. But the case is different with the
generality of leaders the world over. Leadership of the ordinary type is a
process of hypnotizing the public, in which reason is scarcely the only method
thrown in, and other expedients like stunts, bluff, superstition, religious and
communal passion, are abundantly resorted to.
* * *
Prakasam is neither a mass-hypnotiser, nor a crusader for an
ideology. He is a favourite with Andhra crowds who look upon him as a brave man
that has dared much and made immense sacrifices. In their regard for him there
is an element of the gentle mother touch. It is benevolent and protective.
Allowances are made as a matter of course for shortcomings that will not be
tolerated from any other. People are anxious to safeguard his success and
greatness, and the rash ones found endangering it in any manner are treated
wrathfully. Professor Ranga, on the other hand, is a flaming crusader with
tireless propagandist zeal for slogans.
* * *
Professor Ranga’s slogans have changed from time to time.
Change is of course different from inconstancy. In an ever changing world,
refusal to change is apt to degenerate into unrealistic cussedness, however
much abstract theorists may labour to make it look like steadfastness. But
while the lessons of the school of experience for teaching the necessity of
change to correct error and make effort efficient and more perfect cannot be
underrated, there are things of permanent value that admit of no change without
impairment of character and desirable standards. Love of justice should not
change. Since Socialism is a creed pledged to political overhaul on the basis
of economic justice, the Socialism of Socialists should not change.
* * *
Professor Ranga’s start as a Socialist left nothing to be
desired. It was made auspicious by renunciation of an assured career in the
educational line, which precipitated him overnight from opulence and comfort
into privations and comparative poverty. In those days the cause of the workers
and the peasants was ever on his lips, and he never failed to drag it into
discussion whatever the subject on hand. In the Central Assembly, where varied interests
were represented and legislators with a proletarian bent of mind were not many,
he acquired a reputation as a faddist, a man of one-track mind, and was often
subjected to facetious comment, raillery and cruel ridicule. He bore all with
cheerful unconcern. He survived hostility without a scratch. What he could not
withstand was the thought of better service by others to the cause he espoused.
* * *
Our peasantry includes a vast variety of agriculturists. At
the bottom of it lie the landless agricultural labourers, who are economically the worst off of all
people, numerically the largest, and politically and potentially the most
significant. Above them lie gradations of owners of holdings of increasing
size. Each lower gradation pays with a share of its own ill-remunerated toil
for the superior affluence of each higher. A champions of the landless indigent
have cropped up in consequence of the spread of Socialist endeavour, to which
Professor Ranga’s own contribution has not been negligible, he, instead of
being gratified at finding himself rewarded and supported, seems to have felt
his own influence challenged and imperiled. He became unproletarian:
un-Socialistic; anti-Russian. The rebound of the change has been making him
progressively the custodian of the interests of the richer sections of the
peasantry. Concern for the price of grain has taken precedence over concern for
the wages of tillers.
* * *
Professor Ranga’s anti-Communism is the culmination of his
intolerance of fellow-workers in the same fold, except on terms admitting of no
competition with his own position as leader. Political science should go where
arguments lead. But nowadays the Professor has made a speciality of fitting
arguments to conclusions already reached independently. The result is that
prejudice is being clothed with the garb of scientific thought. This is a pity
as Professor Ranga has a great hold on many good workers of excellent mettle
who hang on his words as gospel. It happens that the Presidents of all the
three Provincial Congress Committees in Madras Province are anti-Communists.
Anti-Communism as a creed of hatred is devitalizing. It diverts to destructive
ends precious energy deserving to be more worthily used. Also, it is
inconsistent with any right and proper conception of freedom. Freedom is for self-expression,
and the right to it belongs as much to those you disapprove of as to those whom
you are pleased to regard as friendly.—(May 25, 1946) S A K A.
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